>> Wednesday, September 15, 2010

I haven't been feeling so great for the past few several days. I think maybe a bunch of things just sorta' caught up with me 'cause it really just hit me the other day. I had no energy whatsoever and just felt overall really "blah". I've been off the last two days though, so after pretty much a whole day in bed yesterday, today I'm feeling a little like my old self again.

So due to the fact that I slept for most of the day yesterday, of course I couldn't sleep last night and lay in bed wide awake until about 4 o'clock in the morning. It turned out to be quite the productive bout of insomnia however, as I was struck with an idea at about 3am. It just sort of came to me - the whole thing, top to bottom, all in one neat little package. I actually had a moment where I kind of laughed at myself, 'cause I thought "wow, my best ideas really do come to me in the middle of the night - I should stay up late more often!!"

I don't want to write out here what my idea was just yet, as I want to register it first and actually do up a real proposal, but I will say that it encompasses a whole bunch of different things I'm interested in, and has the possibility (if it succeeds) in growing and branching out in lots of different areas.

It may even involve some of you who are reading this, so stay tuned for more details!!

On a side (and completely unrelated note), is anyone else out there completely obsessed with The Vampire Diaries tv show? The new season started last week and I am in complete Vampire Diaries mode right now. Love, love, love that show!!

And on another side note - I finally jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for Twitter, so if you're on there as well just search for me and we can "follow" each other!

>> Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Wow. One year has passed since I started this little journey of mine. One year ago, I set out a challenge for myself that I promised I would continue to document on this blog.

That challenge was this - I would give myself one year to get my goals back on track and try to pursue a career in songwriting and in acting. I would blog every day, and use this blog to account for what I was doing to go after my dreams.

The reality? Well I definitely didn't blog every day - I have learnt that if you blog every day, you either blog for a living or don't have a full-time job. ;) My life is just too busy a lot of the time to set aside a moment every single day to sit down and blog, and sometimes I just didn't have the energy to do it or want to do it, even if I did have the time! My blog also became a lot more to me than just a blog for tracking my career aspirations. I kind of like to use this blog as a little diary, and I know that a whole bunch of stuff I've posted in the last year had nothing to do with music (or acting), but was just a lot more about my thoughts and random stuff that had happened, etc.

Looking back over my progress over the last year, I can see that some things haven't changed. I'm still at the job I was at before, and part of me still feels as confused as ever as to what I'm going to end up doing as a career. I still struggle with finding a balance between what I spend my time doing, and what I want to spend my time doing. I still have huge moments of inspiration (creatively) and long stretches of time where I don't do anything creative at all.

What has changed? Well I know for sure that music will always be a part of my life, but I'm not sure how large a part that will be, or in what form. I know now though that worrying about that is not a good use of my time, because frankly whether or not I "make it" in the music business is not up to me. God knows what His plan is for me, and I'm confident and sure enough now in my spirituality to know that if that's the path I'm meant to go on, than it will happen. I also know that the humanitarian work I've done in the last year and a half has changed my life for the better and has (in a big way) changed the course of my life forever. That is, and always will be, a major part of my life and who I am, and I am forever grateful for that.

I also know now that acting is not what I'm meant to be spending my time on right now. I still love acting, and if the opportunity ever presented itself to do something in the acting field, I would definitely seriously consider it, but for now my life is focused on music (when the inspiration strikes) and continuing to find opportunities for myself and others to travel to Africa (specifically Uganda) to continue helping in that country in whatever way we can.

It's funny - I've always been the kind of person who wants a "plan", and wants to know where I'm at and where I'm going. Trying to document that this last year I think has actually taught me that it's okay to not have a plan, to not know where you are and what's coming up next. I feel now that my life is sort of in "limbo" - I don't know what the next year, or 5 years, or 10 years will hold. Heck, I don't even know what the next 6 months will hold! But you know what? I'm okay with that. I'm okay with having different aspects of my life up in the air and not knowing where they're going to land. At 30, I don't have it all "together", but the one thing in life that is really important, the love, well I've been blessed in that department time and time again. I've got that in spades. Whatever else encompasses my life is icing on the cake.

So what of this 'ole blog of mine? Well a year may be up, but I'll continue to blog about my life and what I'm learning along the way. Hopefully whomever reads this will find it either useful or hopefully at least somewhat entertaining.

It's September, a new school year has started for all the young-uns, and it's the season for new beginnings and fresh starts for the rest of us. I'm excited to welcome Fall just being grateful for the amazing summer I had and for all the amazing things I know are to come.

Thank-you to everyone whose followed this blog, left comments or sent me email messages, and hopefully you'll continue to do so as I continue to stumble along this "road less traveled".

>> Tuesday, September 7, 2010

It's been 7 days since I got back from Africa. 7 days. Part of me feels like it was already ages ago that I was in Uganda and Kenya, but there's another part of me that feels like I just left. I have so many stories to tell, and so many thoughts swirling through my head and emotions tumbling around my heart, it's hard to know where to begin.

That being said, I probably won't be blogging about Africa anytime soon. It's just too soon, and it's too close to my heart for words to even begin to describe the breadth of feeling I have about the people and places of Uganda, and what I saw while I visited the Kibera slum in Kenya. I just attempted writing a first "Africa update blog" about our visit, and then promptly deleted the whole thing as it just didn't even come close to describing things properly. I will end up posting some stuff, but it'll probably just be snippets of certain days or experiences, or random thoughts about the trip, rather than a thorough recap of each day. It's just too much to describe and I know there's certain things I just have to sit with and wrap my brain around before I could ever think to probably describe or explain them.

So please bear with me as I struggle to get back into the swing of things here in Canada, and for any disconnected or disjointed blogs I post in the next little while . . .

>> Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I'm back!!

Chris and I arrived home in Toronto yesterday afternoon, after two very long flights.

After bringing in the luggage and saying hello to Franklin (who we were really excited to see), I pretty much crashed for the rest of the day and evening. My body is still on Africa time, so I keep thinking it's 7 hours ahead - hopefully the jetlag doesn't last too long.

It was an amazing trip. I'll post some detailed blogs about it soon, but for now I'll just say that it was amazing and that our trips there continue to change me and the course of my life in a drastic way. It was an immense honour to be able to go back and to meet such incredible people, and I can honestly say that although I'm back, I left my heart and a huge piece of my soul in Uganda.